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Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) warned on Wednesday that passing a bill later this year to provide more money for the Defense Department and military aid to Ukraine will be “a challenge,” despite a pledge Senate leaders made last week to defense hawks. Asked at a press conference how he could assure the passage of an emergency Ukraine and defense supplemental spending bill over the objections of House conservatives, McConnell acknowledged it faces an uncertain path forward. “All I can tell you at this particular point is defense is radically underfunded related to the Chinese threat and Ukraine will...

amzan Kadyrov, the leader of the Chechen Republic, offered on Sunday to send military forces from his country to help Russian President Vladimir Putin ward off attacks in the Belgorod region. Belgorod has been the site of numerous attacks in recent weeks. The region's governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, and other Russian officials have blamed the attacks on Ukraine, but Kyiv has denied responsibility while two anti-Putin paramilitary groups—the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom for Russia Legion—have claimed credit for them. Though Belgorod has experienced brief conflicts since Putin ordered his invasion of Ukraine more than 15 months ago, the recent...

Ukrainian forces continued to shell Russia's border region of Belgorod overnight into Sunday after two people were killed the previous night and hundreds of children were evacuated away from the border, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. "Overnight, it was quite restless," Gladkov said on the Telegram channel, adding that the Shebekino and Volokonovsky districts had suffered "lots" of damage from the latest shelling. Gladkov later wrote that fires had broken out in the town of Shebekino after Ukrainian forces shelled a market area in the centre, adding that nobody had been injured. Shebekino is about 7 km (4 miles) from the...

Vladimir Putin’s troops “may not hold on to Bakhmut,” a military analyst has said. Michael Kofman of the Center for Naval Analyses, a US research group, said Russian forces will “find it difficult to defend” Bakhmut now Wagner mercenary fighters are withdrawing from the city. “And so they may not hold on to Bakhmut, and the whole thing may have ended up being for nothing for them down the line,” he told the War on the Rocks podcast in an interview on Tuesday. Russian forces declared victory in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut last month after a nine-month battle...

MOSCOW, June 5 (Reuters) - Russian forces have thwarted a major Ukrainian offensive in the southern Ukrainian region of Donetsk and killed hundreds of pro-Kyiv troops, the defence ministry in Moscow said on Monday. In a statement, the ministry said Ukraine had launched the attack on Sunday using six mechanised and two tank battalions. "On the morning of June 4, the enemy launched a large-scale offensive in five sectors of the front in the South Donetsk direction," the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app. Reuters was unable to immediately verify the Russian statement. There was no immediate comment from...

The idea might be to stop selling off all the weapons and ammo nato gives them on the black markets...

MOSCOW, June 5 (Reuters) - Russia said on Monday that its forces had thwarted a major Ukrainian offensive at five points along the front in the southern Ukrainian region of Donetsk and killed hundreds of pro-Kyiv troops. It was not immediately clear whether or not the reported attack represented the start of a Ukrainian counteroffensive which Kyiv has been promising for months to recapture territory taken by Russian forces after the invasion of February 2022. Russia's defence ministry said Ukraine had attacked with six mechanised and two tank battalions in southern Donetsk, where Moscow has long suspected Ukraine would seek...

Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley, U.N. ambassador under former President Donald Trump, went after her ex-boss and 2024 rival Ron DeSantis on Sunday over their refusal to say whether they want Ukraine to win its war against Russia. In recent town hall events, Trump, the favorite for the Republican presidential nomination, said that he wanted the war to end, but that he would help Ukraine and Russia negotiate a settlement. Florida Governor DeSantis, Trump's nearest rival for the Republican nomination, said recently that he supports a settlement to the war, and that he hopes fighting will end by the time...

Good Moring to lovers of FREEEDOM! A lot of good news. The Bologrod liberation grows (200 Sq kilometers), Ukraines advances on Bahkmut, Ukraine performs reconnaissance in advance of the counter offensive.

This is the FULL Summary / SITREP of Day 465-466's development in the Ukraine-Russia war as we start off the day in the morning (ukraine time) of Day 467 of Russian's "Special Military Operation" against Ukraine.

Russia continues to pummel Ukrainian positions throughout the country and Ukraine continues to insist that it is shooting down Russian missiles and that the Russian attacks are inconsequential. Well, as Chris Berman of ESPN was fond of saying, “let’s go to the video tape.” The following video provides clear evidence that Ukraine’s air defense system is not working (you can see the launches from Patriot or IRIS batteries) and that Russia is blasting the Ukrainian air defense system into smithereens. Focus on the lower left hand quadrant of the video. Ukraine launched a few missiles and they disappeared into the...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that his forces stand ready to launch their long-promised counteroffensive to reclaim Russian-occupied territory. "We strongly believe that we will succeed," Zelenskyy told The Wall Street Journal. "I don’t know how long it will take." "To be honest, it can go a variety of ways, completely different," he said. "But we are going to do it, and we are ready."

Our instructors were training a Ukrainian national guard unit near the Moldovan border. When we arrived at the range, a Ukrainian unit was already on the range throwing hand grenades in an open field less than 200 meters from us, then just dropping to the ground and watching them explode without any cover. These soldiers then proceeded to conduct machine gun training, shooting from positions from the left range berm across the range (not against the backstop). Our instructors were conducting round-robin training about 150 meters behind the range, and the rounds were whistling over our heads. When we approached...

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the WSJ that Ukraine is ready for its counteroffensive.But he warned that Russian air superiority would exact a heavy toll on Ukrainian soldiers. Zelenskyy said he would like to wait for more support from allies but isn't willing to wait "for months."Ukraine's long-awaited counteroffensive may be near.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told The Wall Street Journal that his country was ready to start re-taking territory from the Russians. "We strongly believe that we will succeed," he told the outlet.

Sanctions against Russia are the success story of the advanced democracies. Vladimir Putin’s ability to wage military war against Ukraine, geo-ideological war against the liberal world, is being ground down systematically with each month. Earnings from Russia’s oil and gas exports fell 52pc over the first four months of this year, and hydrocarbon rent is what funds two-fifths of the Kremlin’s budget. Last year, Putin had no difficulty financing his invasion from the windfall gains of the energy price spike, caused in large part by his own actions. He raise pensions by 10pc and scatter enough money to shield Russia’s...

Ukraine claimed “another unbelievable success” on Tuesday morning, stating it had shot down six ‘hypersonic’ missiles over Ukraine overnight, stating that the damage on the ground in Kyiv this morning was caused by falling missile debris. Six Kinzhal (Dagger/Killjoy) ‘hypersonic’ missiles were shot down over Ukraine overnight, as well as nine cruise missiles, three ballistic missiles, six suicide drones, and three reconnaissance drones, the Ukrainian government claimed Tuesday morning.

The U.S. on Friday announced a $400 million security aid package for Ukraine, providing more ammunition, equipment and munitions for Kyiv in its fight against Russia. The State Department said the latest package includes munitions for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and howitzer artillery guns, as well as ammunition for the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles the U.S. first announced for Ukraine in January. The latest round of security aid also includes demolitions munitions, equipment and other material, as well as services for maintenance, training and support of Ukrainian troops, who have been fighting against a Russian invasion for...

A crowd laughed at Russia's top diplomat when he said the Ukraine war "was launched against us." An audience member at India's G20 summit shouted "come on!" at Sergey Lavrov during the event. He was answering a question about Russia's energy strategy moving forward. Sergey Lavrov, Russia's top diplomat and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, at a conference in India Thursday said that the war in Ukraine "was launched against us," prompting the crowd to erupt in laughter. Lavrov was a speaker at India's G20 Summit in New Delhi, leading a session that was part of a...

If the cause of Ukraine is righteous, there is no reason to chill debate.It’s not exactly a sign of a healthy democratic discourse that it’s virtually impossible to ask a critical question about the United States’ role in the Ukraine-Russia conflict without being smeared as a Putin apologist or an “isolationist.” We’ve been bombarded with bromides about a civilizational struggle that pits the forces of autocracy and liberalism against each other. “It’s not just about freedom in Ukraine,” Biden tells us. “It’s about freedom of democracy at large.” Yet Ukraine — which, before the war, regularly slotted in somewhere beneath...

During today’s House Armed Services Committee (HASC) hearing on “Oversight of U.S. Military Support to Ukraine,” U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) grilled Department of Defense Inspector General Robert Storch on whether the Biden Administration is conducting rigorous oversight and ensuring military equipment is delivered to the correct recipients in Ukraine. Since the onset of the war a year ago, the United States has been the top contributor of military equipment and aid to Ukraine, sending over $113 Billion of taxpayer money to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.